


Florilegium

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: (why is there not a tag for Donne? fandom what are we doing?), Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Ghosts, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Literary References & Allusions, Married Couple, Married Life, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Music, Piffle, Pillow Talk, Rain, Shakespeare Quotations, Whimsy, World War II, john donne
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2018-10-01 14:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10192361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: A collection of Wimseyverse drabbles and ficlets, originally from Tumblr prompts, mostly on words. Chapters are self-contained; it's marked unfinished as it's a repository for things too short to be sensibly organized into a series.





	1. Strikhedonia

Honoria Lucasta sits in bed, listening to her husband’s stumbling progress up the stairs. She has not gone to see since the night she found Williams giving money to a cabman while his master leaned heavily against the doorpost. When the house is quiet again, she gets up (ungainly with pregnancy, she disturbs both Tiglath-Pileser and _The Moon and Sixpence_ in the process.) She finds Gerald sprawled, snoring, and oblivious. He looks, she thinks, like a bad caricature of himself. She shivers with rage, now, rather than fear. His behavior takes them ever nearer to open scandal, and remains an untellable secret.

Dashing away tears, the Duchess catches a glimpse of something unexpected almost at her shoulder. She blinks, and looks again. Great-Uncle Roger -- Great-Uncle Roger, of all people! -- here, and at this time of night. The old guardsman’s watery grey eyes seem more melancholy than their wont. She’s sure that he’s aware of her, but he neither speaks nor looks in her direction. Instead, he stalks grimly, martially to the side of the bed. Gerald makes a noise marginally more uneasy than a snore. And then, to the Duchess’ astonishment, Great-Uncle Roger begins to pace. 

He paces with a tread no less regular for being insubstantial; he paces over –- or through, thinks the Duchess distractedly -- the legs of his recumbent and insensible scion. Honoria Lucasta sighs with guilty delight, and feels long-held tension go out of her shoulders. She smiles beatifically up at Great-Uncle Roger, who acknowledges her with what she might almost think of as a wink. Oh, the blessed relief of not being alone any more! And, she reflects with satisfaction, as she gathers her robes about her, Gerald will feel like absolute hell in the morning.


	2. Ultracrepidarian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Would Bunter, the omniscient and the self-effacing, ever be ultracrepidarian, offering opinions on matters beyond his knowledge?

Mervyn Bunter reloads his rifle. He can do so, now, within five seconds. The rough breathing of the man next to him is more palpable than the shaking of the earth beneath them. 

“Don’t worry, sir,” says Sergeant Bunter; “we’re sure to make it back.” 

The sharp face of the officer, pale beneath grime, is turned to him. “Don’t you ever, Sergeant, pronounce on matters beyond your knowledge. Or tell your superiors lies they want to hear,” he adds. 

Bunter, hearing the tone of the voice, dares a grin in the strafe-lit darkness. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Major Wimsey.”


	3. Rejection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drabble from a Tumblr prompt, imagined as taking place a few months before the events of _Have His Carcase._

“Harriet…”

“Please don’t say it!”

His lordship picked at an invisible roughness on the steering wheel. “And there was silence in heaven,” said he at last, “about the space of half an hour.”

“We were having such a nice evening,” said Harriet lamely. London was turning to springtime; she was beginning to feel that life might be possible, after all.

She saw, rather than heard him inhale deeply. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. And don’t worry, I won’t.”

“I’m sorry, Peter.”

He met her eyes. “That’s something, anyway.”

“What is?”

He smiled. “Your use of my Christian name. Good night, Harriet.”


	4. Veneration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmastide at Talboys

“Thank God,” said Harriet Wimsey to her husband, _sotto voce_ , “that they’re so absolutely in awe of Bunter.” 

“Amen to that fair prayer, say I,” responded Lord Peter, tucking his wife’s hand through his arm. 

This exchange was the most holy conversation that had taken place at Talboys that Sunday morning. But now—at last!—the riot of small boys had been miraculously translated into an orderly procession, from which Bredon only occasionally broke free to make cantering forays over the pristine snow. 

Harriet sighed, contentment mingling with a sense of continually-renewed relief. Here, then, the heart of rest.


	5. Playing the Melody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drabble on a Tumblr prompt of the same name... a challenge for two musicians who love the counterpoint.

“Hardly apt, dearest, surely?”

“Hm?” Lord Peter Wimsey played through the stanza’s conclusion, as if reminding himself of what he had been picking out. “Heart with sorrows hath infected… No, I suppose not.” He ranged over the keys.

“My thoughts are wing’d with hopes, my hopes with love! Mount, Love, unto the moon in clearest night…”

Harriet listened politely while Dowland’s grandiloquent lover declaimed his woes, then queried mildly:

“Have I been particularly Cynthia-like lately?”

“Perish the thought!” The opening chords of “Come again, sweet love” rang out like a fanfare. “I was just wondering about getting a harpsichord.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs are all Dowland's. The last one quoted is, of course, the one that Harriet told Peter _not_ to play in the back of the antiques shop on the High.


	6. Broken Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to a Tumblr prompt for Gherkins and broken glass. This is compliant with the Wimsey Papers insofar as I am aware, but I welcome correction on this point.

Glass, shattering: on the floor of the darkroom, the remains of a photographic plate. Bunter had demanded, voice tight, if he was hurt, and then exhaled, receiving a reply in the negative. “Then stand well clear, your lordship.” Blushing and miserable, he had done so. Later – no longer blushing but scarcely less miserable – he had stood in the door of the butler’s pantry, cleared his throat for notice, followed an invitation to enter. Bunter had resumed the polishing of the coffee urn, imperturbably accepting of his presence. 

“I’m sorry for being careless with your things.” 

“You needn’t mention it, your lordship.”

“But I wanted to mention it.” He had drummed his heels against the cupboards. “It was kind of you to let me watch. And Uncle Peter said it was bad enough that you had to put up with him all the time without me mucking about with your space and your tools.”

Bunter had coughed, and become deeply absorbed in the polishing of the urn’s spout. “Care and practice,” he had said, a few moments later. “Most things worth doing take care and practice.”

***

Glass, shattering: had he only imagined that, later, as the beginning of the adventure in the library, with the burglar’s pistol cold in his hand, and then the interrogation that he had accepted with the unquestioning delight of a child, and the thrill of one who was beginning to think of himself as a young man? 

***

Glass, shattering: curiously, it is the only thing he remembers about the smash, after the screech of tires, the wrench of the wheel. There must have been the scream of brakes, the angry, dull, disastrous crunch of metal against wood… but all he remembers is the bright, high sound of glass shattering.

***

Glass, shattering: he had expected the windscreen of the Spitfire to collapse in on him… or to spin wildly away, shards falling through space as in the Andersen tale, to turn the hearts of children cold. But the glass had shattered and held, while the 109s passed by. And he had flown home squinting past the opaque dazzle radiating out from the lodged bullet.

***

Glass, shattering: when he gets himself more or less upright in the bed, it is to find Aunt Harriet already bending for the pieces of the tumbler. The lines of her are still lovely, he thinks; water has darkened the hem of her skirt, patterned the floor at her feet.

“Sorry,” he mumbles.

“You needn’t be,” she says; “it was an unlucky break.” He wonders at her ability to say such things so calmly; part of him wants to shout at her. But then she straightens, and he sees the worry in her eyes and the threads of gray in her hair, and he smiles sheepishly.

“I don’t even think I was dreaming.”

“That’s all to the good, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” He swallows hard. A nurse appears with a dustpan, which Harriet takes with an almost voiceless thanks. “It’s kind of you to stop.”

“You know I’m glad to, Gherkins.” He finds himself, as always, oddly touched by her use of the childish nickname. He wonders when she picked it up from Uncle Peter. If he didn’t think it would stop her doing it, he’d ask. 

“I am also,” she says, “cleverly avoiding a knitting circle. They’ve outgrown the vicarage, and the church is draughty… so Mrs. Goodacre brings them to Talboys. All very suitable, only they will keep trying to teach me to knit.”

The Viscount St. George laughs. “Tell me,” he says drowsily, “how awful you are at it.” He falls asleep to the sound of her voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I confess that I had expected that Spitfire windscreens would shatter to bits, but was proved wrong: https://books.google.com/books?id=LUXDCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT27&lpg=PT27&dq=what+would+happen+if+the+windscreen+of+a+spitfire+shattered?&source=bl&ots=yJyEn2YsSS&sig=mcL5-_hSOI1lGf8k2UR7HbIpzLc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_mp_WxbTUAhVr4IMKHVzZAloQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=what%20would%20happen%20if%20the%20windscreen%20of%20a%20spitfire%20shattered%3F&f=false
> 
> Canon events referenced are from "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head" and from _Gaudy Night_.


	7. A la pioggia mi fiacco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt by @middlemarch: Lord Peter and a really, really specific simile.

“Io venni,” declaimed Lord Peter Wimsey, “in loco d’ogne luce muto, che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta, se da contrari venti è combattuto.”

“Quite so,” responded his wife, adjusting her hold on the tarpaulin. “I could never quite rid myself of the feeling that Dante’s similes could be a thought ill-timed.”

Lord Peter bent his head under the rebuke and over Mrs. Merdle’s engine.

“I _think_ ,” he said presently, “that she must have gotten water-logged as we came over the last bridge.”

Harriet sighed. “We walk, then?”

“Not so hasty. If her spark plugs are dry, she ought to be all right now that she’s stood for a bit.” He contemplated the uneven and increasingly muddy surface of the road with an air of stoic resignation. “I’ll have to get under the car.”

Wordlessly Harriet handed him the tarpaulin, and left him to adjust the bonnet and his own position while she scrambled for an umbrella. Despite the rain, it was not very cold, and she found, contemplating the lower half of her husband, that her predominant feeling was one of amusement. From under the car proceeded the strains of the gondolier’s song in Rossini’s _Otello_.

“You,” said Harriet, confident of not being heard over the rain and the singer’s own voice, “are a ridiculous man.”

Presently, a cry of triumph. “Got it — ow!” said his lordship. He wriggled inelegantly out from under the car, and squinted up at her. Obligingly, she held out her free hand. Standing, he did not release it from his clasp.

"Amor,” said Lord Peter Wimsey gravely, “c’ha nullo amato amar perdona, mi prese del costui piacer si forte, che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona.”

“Questi,” responded his wife, “che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi basciò tutto tremante.” 

He suited the action to the word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Each of the passages in medieval Tuscan is taken from Canto V of the Inferno. Regrettably, I don’t own Sayers’ translation of the work, so here are the relevant lines in Mandelbaum’s:
> 
>  
> 
> _I reached a place where every light is muted, / which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest, / when it is battered by opposing winds._
> 
>  
> 
> _Love, that releases no beloved from loving, / took hold of me so strongly through his beauty / that, as you see, it has not left me yet._
> 
>  
> 
> Extra note: here, Lord Peter is using words uttered by Francesca of Paolo, thus the pronoun. The point being that Paolo and Francesca are lovers, introduced as souls who are united even in death.
> 
> And the last couplet, Harriet’s (and Francesca’s):
> 
>  
> 
> _This one, who never shall be parted from me / while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth._
> 
>  
> 
> The gondolier’s song is also taken from Inferno V. It seemed like the kind of thing that might suggest itself to Lord Peter’s mind, even if sung tongue-in-cheek, as it were; it is about recalling happy times while suffering miseries.
> 
> My knowledge of 1930s Daimler engines is virtually non-existent, so I hope my use of it as a plot device may be pardoned.


	8. Viewless Wings

“Don’t _growl_ , Peter dearest,” said Harriet Wimsey, without taking her eyes from the road.

“Mmmm,” returned his lordship. His wife decided to interpret the noise charitably. For some time they proceeded in silence, Mrs. Merdle humming with her customary dignity.

“You’re very fortunate, you know,” added Harriet, navigating a bridge that had not been designed for automobiles, let alone for those of Mrs. Merdle’s magnificence.

“Mmmm,” said Peter Wimsey again, and clarified the remark with: “In the quality of my wife, or that of my car?”

“In neither,” said Harriet firmly, and ground the gear lever. “That is, in both –- that is, oh damn! Sorry,” she added contritely, resuming her _entente cordiale_ with the Daimler.

“What I meant,” said Harriet, “is that I know you hate being driven, but if you growl at me I will have us over in a ditch, and dent things, and probably break your other arm, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“Do you know,” said his lordship musingly, “I think the boys have had a deleterious effect on your vocabulary. But it’s all right; I’ve as many lives as a cat, and the utmost confidence in your driving, though it be not as the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi.”

“Idiot,” said Harriet. “And cats don’t go chasing after dangerous criminals in the autumn of their days.”

“Season of mists,” returned Peter indignantly, “and mellow fruitfulness. Close bosom friend of the maturing sun, conspiring with him how –- ” 

“It’s the conspiring,” said Harriet darkly, “that worries me.” After a few minutes’ silence and a roundabout, she added: “I was afraid for you, Peter.”

“How very conjugal of you, Harriet!”

“Shut up.”

“Yours to command –- ow!”

“And _don’t_ try to kiss my hand while I’m driving. It’s bad for you. And very distracting.” Glancing over at him, she was relieved to note that the lines around his mouth had lost their pinched whiteness. “You may,” said Harriet, “quote Keats at me, if you like.”

“Oh good,” said her husband. “Away! away! for I will fly to thee, not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, but on the viewless wings of Poesy, though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night…”

Together they drove home to Talboys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shameless domestic fluff, for the prompt from @kivrin, "Harriet Vane: driving in/around a car." The poems from which Lord Peter quotes are Keats' "Ode to Autumn" and "Ode to a Nightingale." Jehu, son of Nimshi, is identified by his (in)famous driving in 2 Kings: "He came even unto them and cometh not back; and the driving is like the driving of Jehu the son of Nimshi, for he driveth furiously."


	9. Under the Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quiet Sunday morning at Talboys (originally for the double Tumblr prompt "memory/under the rain.")

The rain fell steadily from a silver sky, veiling the village. At Talboys, it dripped from the chimney pots and ran down from the eaves. The householders contemplated it from the depths of a goose-feather bed.

“D’you know,” said Lord Peter Wimsey quietly, tightening his arm around his wife’s waist, “there was a time when I hated rain.”

“Mm?” It was a half-drowsy note of mild interrogation.

“No good for the cricket pitch,” said Peter into the nape of Harriet’s neck; she knew it to be a prefatory remark. “Drains all the light from Oxford’s stones, as you know. And then… it meant mud, and it seemed endless. The damp, the cold, the wet — chiefly the mud.” The repetition came with a breath that was not quite laughter.

Harriet bit back the rejoinder that that was a hell of a commentary on a war, and leaned into her husband’s embrace. Feeling his rapid heartbeat, she brought his hand to rest against her own. The bell for service reached them dimly, as though the rain cut them off from sound as well as sight of the village. Close by came the piping of a chaffinch.

“Listen,” said Harriet; “birdsong.”


	10. Thalia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From @middlemarch's suggestion that a fourth child in the Wimsey-Vane ménage might be a daughter.

“Thalia, I think,” says Harriet.

“Do you?” He is perched on the edge of the bed, one thumb stroking the skin above her knee almost absently. His eyes have not left the face of their infant daughter.

“Yes,” says Harriet simply. Thalia, for abundance and joy and, yes, grace.

“We can always insert something suitably biblical to assuage the vicar’s feelings.”

“Dear Mr. Goodacre! Yes. Do take her, Peter.” He obeys wordlessly, his long-fingered hands deft and tender.

“Judith,” says Harriet. “Or — oh! What about Katherine?”

Peter looks up at her, and smiles. “Her godmother will be in ecstasies.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My Sayers paperbacks are not consistent in the spelling of Miss Climpson's Christian name. Is she a Katharine or a Katherine? (She is, apparently, Alexandra, but since she goes by the second...!) Textual criticism welcomed.


	11. Time doth tarry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Peter and Bunter at the conclusion of an intelligence mission

“ ‘Absence, hear thou my protestation,” quotes Lord Peter Wimsey, “Against thy strength, /Distance and length: / Do what thou canst for alteration; / For hearts of truest mettle, / Absence doth join, and time doth settle.’ Attributed to Donne, Bunter, but I have my doubts.”

“Have you, my lord?”

“Far too contented,” continues his lordship, between chattering teeth, “with his damned absence. ‘Reason doth win / Redoubl’d in her secret notions…’ Donne was too sensible a fellow to put overmuch faith in reason.”

“Indeed, my lord.” Bunter settles himself more firmly against his tree. It provides at least some shelter from the wind, and a shadow more substantial than his own. Even with the experiences of an earlier war, he finds himself starting at the sounds of foxes in the undergrowth, half-expecting the lights of electric torches, the shouts of pursuit.

“ ‘Hearts that cannot vary…’ I’m glad you’re here, Bunter.”

Mervyn Bunter, with more than half a lifetime’s training behind him, restrains the impulse to protest against his lordship saying such things. The sentiment that a field in France is no place for two middle-aged Englishmen on a midwinter night remains likewise unvoiced. Bunter keeps to himself the grim conviction that they will be told — presuming, of course, that the plane does come, and that they do get out — how necessary and how worthwhile were their endeavors. Familiar cant.

“What did you say, Bunter?”

“Nothing, my lord.”

“You said it very loudly.”

Bunter coughs. “Yes, my lord.”

“I know. It’s a damned filthy business. Food for powder, food for powder…”

“Hardly that, my lord,” says Bunter, alarmed. Fluent German and unassailable sangfroid have gotten them this far. Neither of those things, however, will provide assistance against the other man’s fever or his own frostbite. The cold has settled in his bones like a memory of the trenches; the sky over them is empty of all but stars.

“By absence,” says Lord Peter softly, “this good means I gain, / That I can catch her / Where none can watch her, / In some close corner of my brain. / There I embrace and kiss her, / And so I both enjoy and miss her.’ ”

Bunter makes no rejoinder. He is visited by a stab of anger, painful as freezing limbs. Perhaps it is better that they should risk themselves than that younger men and women should do so, but it is still a violation of the order of things. Bunter in his wrath decides that he shall refuse a medal, if it is offered, and then reverses his decision. He thinks wildly that he should have asked Lady Harriet to look after his mother in the event of his death. It would have meant asking her to confront the possible death of the man beside him. But remembering her farewell, solemn and dry-eyed, he rather thinks she already has. _I know you’ll look after him, Bunter; look after yourself too, won’t you?_

In the distance, low and unmistakable, comes the rumble of a plane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is taken from the poem which Lord Peter quotes: https://www.bartleby.com/331/424.html


End file.
